Acts 7:35–38

Acts 7:35 — The Rejected One Sent by God Stephen's rhetoric is deliberately ironic. The very phrase used to dismiss Moses in Egypt — "Who made you a ruler and a judge?" (cf. Ex 2:14) — is now repeated, but this time to establish the opposite point: God himself made Moses exactly that. The double title archōn (ruler) and dikastēs (judge/deliverer) underscores Moses' comprehensive authority, both political and juridical. Yet to this Stephen adds a third title, lytrōtēn — "redeemer" or "deliverer" — a word charged with soteriological weight. The deliverer is sent not by human consensus but by divine commission, mediated by "the angel who appeared to him in the bush" (cf. Ex 3:2). This angelic mediator at the burning bush was interpreted by many Church Fathers as a pre-incarnate appearance of the Second Person of the Trinity — the Logos acting as divine messenger. Stephen's point is unmistakable: rejection by men does not void divine appointment. The structural parallel to Jesus, rejected by the Sanhedrin yet vindicated by the Father (cf. Acts 4:11), is precise and intentional.

Acts 7:36 — Three Theaters of Divine Power Stephen traces Moses' wonder-working ministry across three geographical stages: Egypt, the Red Sea, and the wilderness. This tripartite schema is not incidental. It mirrors the full arc of Exodus — liberation, passage through water, and the long formation of God's people. The "wonders and signs" (terata kai sēmeia) performed by Moses are the exact same phrase Luke uses for the works of Jesus (Acts 2:22) and the Apostles (Acts 2:43), deliberately linking them as participants in the same divine economy of salvation. The forty years in the wilderness is a number freighted with testing, formation, and covenant renewal — and anticipates both Elijah's forty-day journey and Jesus' forty-day fast in the desert (Mt 4:2). Stephen is painting Moses not merely as a historical figure but as a theological archetype.

Acts 7:37 — The Mosaic Prophecy of the Greater Prophet This verse is the hinge on which Stephen's entire typological argument turns. He quotes Deuteronomy 18:15 — "The Lord our God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me" — the same text Peter cited at Pentecost (Acts 3:22). Moses does not merely prefigure Christ; he prophesies him. The phrase kathos eme ("like me") is crucial: the coming Prophet would share Moses' intimacy with God, his role as mediator of the covenant, his work of liberation, and his experience of rejection. By placing this prophecy in Moses' own mouth, Stephen turns the Sanhedrin's reverence for Moses against their rejection of Jesus: to honor Moses is to receive the One he foretold.

Acts 7:38 — Living Words Entrusted to Israel The term ekklēsia ("assembly") used here — often rendered "congregation" in the wilderness — is significant: it is the same Greek word translated "church." The assembly in the wilderness around Moses is a type of the Church gathered around Christ. The phrase logia zōnta — "living oracles" or "living revelations" — refers primarily to the Torah received at Sinai, but the adjective "living" (zōnta) points beyond the letter to the vivifying power of God's word. Stephen is not denigrating the Torah; he is insisting on its living, forward-pointing character. The word entrusted to Moses was not a dead letter but a living seed waiting to flower in the New Covenant. The Catechism's teaching on the unity of Old and New Testaments (CCC 128–130) finds a precise scriptural anchor here.

Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates this passage through the lens of typology as a formal hermeneutical principle. The Catechism teaches that "the Church, as early as apostolic times, and then constantly in her Tradition, has illuminated the unity of the divine plan in the two Testaments through typology" (CCC 128). Moses as typos of Christ is one of the oldest and most developed of all biblical types. St. Augustine articulated the governing principle: "The New Testament lies hidden in the Old, the Old Testament is made manifest in the New" (Quaestiones in Heptateuchum, 2.73). Stephen's speech is perhaps the earliest sustained typological reading of Moses in the New Testament.

The Church Fathers were fascinated by the burning bush theophany referenced in verse 35. St. Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho, 59–60) and St. Irenaeus (Against Heresies III.6.1) identified the angel at the bush as the pre-incarnate Christ — a reading that makes Stephen's argument even more profound: the very One who commissioned Moses now stands before the Sanhedrin in the flesh.

St. Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Moses (De Vita Moysis) develops the entire Exodus narrative as a map of the soul's ascent to God, with Moses as the paradigmatic mystic whose face-to-face encounter with God (Num 12:8) foreshadows the Christian's union with Christ.

The phrase logia zōnta — "living oracles" — resonates with Vatican II's Dei Verbum (§21), which teaches that "the word of God is living and active" (Heb 4:12) and that Sacred Scripture must always be read in the living Tradition of the Church. Moses received words that were alive; the Church has received the fullness of that living Word made flesh (Jn 1:14).

Stephen's meditation on Moses challenges contemporary Catholics to examine how we, too, can honor the letter of faith while refusing its living Spirit. It is possible to reverence the Scriptures, attend Mass faithfully, and know the catechism — while still resisting the living Christ who unsettles our comfort and challenges our power, exactly as the Sanhedrin did. The pattern Stephen identifies is perennial: God's deliverers are rejected before they are recognized.

More concretely, verse 37's quotation of Deuteronomy 18:15 invites Catholics to read the entire Old Testament christologically — not as a collection of unrelated laws and stories, but as a sustained preparation for Christ. This is not mere academic exercise; it transforms how we pray the Psalms, hear the First Reading at Mass, and understand the Liturgy of the Word as a genuine encounter with the living Christ who speaks now.

The "living oracles" of verse 38 also speak to our relationship with Sacred Scripture and Tradition. God's word was not given to be archived but to be inhabited. Pope Francis (Evangelii Gaudium, §152) urges that we approach Scripture not as a dead document but as a letter written personally to each of us by the living God.